Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/215

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Denver. All summer the police searched, and the Judge and Lee Martin often talked over the case. One day Lee said:

“I’d like to get that kid for you, Judge. I’ll bet he’s down to the fair at El Paso. You send me down there, and — I won’t be a ‘ snitch cop,’ but I believe I kin get him to come in.”

The Judge gave Lee five dollars, and the boy went across the line to the bull-fight. There was Teddy. The two boys took in the fair together, but Lee talked “crime, and the prin- ciples of the Juvenile Court” to Teddy, and back these two came together to the “Jedge.” Teddy “snitched up.” The Judge gave him twenty dollars to redeem the watch he had pawned for three dollars, and when Teddy returned with the watch and the exact change, he was sent to deliver the watch to the owner and to admit that he was the thief. That settled the case, and that settled Teddy. “We had no more trouble with Teddy Mack,” the Judge says, “though he had been one of the worst boy thieves in the city.”

The boy with whom Lee Martin had the most trouble was Lee Martin. He could not settle down. The habit of “bumming,” developed in him from early childhood, was too strong, and every once in a while that “movin’-about fever”